When I first started to write this story, almost two months ago, everything was simple. I got wind that Late Night Special was getting ready to release their second album; one that I had known they were working on for quite some time. They released their first single, entitled “Disco”, off of it shortly thereafter, and a couple of days later, Records On The Wall hit me up to see if I’d do an interview with Fred and talk about the upcoming album release party at Amos’ South End. That was before the quarantine.

Now with the statewide stay-at-home order, the show at Amos’ had to be postponed. But that won’t stop Fred and Late Night Special from putting out their new album Halfway To Somewhere this Friday.
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I first met Late Night Special lead singer and frontman, Fred Heintz, in the days leading up to his Shakedown Festival in 2016. I had just started my podcast and he had just released LNS’s first LP titled Light of the Moon. I reached out to him to see if I could set up a booth and do my show live from his live show. The weekend was epic, both shows were great, and I left there feeling like here’s a guy that gets it. Not just how to write a song, but how to put on a show; how to front a band in front of a 100 person crowd as if it was Wembley Stadium filled to the top.

This time I found Fred in Downtown Concord at one of my favorite incognito beer joints, Lil’ Roberts Place. The eclectic little bar always has good music, is artist-friendly, and has a convenient smoking area outside; which is more important to my enjoyment of a night out than I would like to admit.

Mick: Alright man, I’ve seen you play a dozen times, but how did you guys form?

Fred Heintz: It originally started with me and Bradley Cannon as like a two-piece. He would play percussion or drums and I would play guitar. And when we recorded our first album we had Derrick Furr and Rob Shoemaker sit in to record with us. After recording the album, we started doing a couple shows together and that’s when I guess you could say we became a band. So I think year after we released our album we gotta show at the Visulite Theatre, and things really progressed.

We invited some friends who were producers that I had been writing with. And after the show, they were like “the way y’all captivated that encore and took it to the next level. Y’all completely owned it, and we want to invite you up to Nashville and record.”

When we went to Nashville and recorded, that whole experience recording was like a huge learning experience. It was a great inspiration. I just felt like we were doing something really right. We were at a place called Eastside Manor, where The Roots recorded two Grammy-winning songs. And the studio owners are just like bringing musicians and people from Nashville into our sessions to check us out. And so, after that recording process, it was kind of like this thing in my head where I was like, dude, we should do this full time because that’s what they were telling us.

But reality can sink in quick and the drummer and bass player had to step aside to keep their nine-to-fives. Fred continued to hustle and book gigs, playing with a rotating lineup of musician friends.

Mick: I saw that you have still been touring with LNS here and there, but you’ve also done some solo stuff over the past couple of years. How has the band, and you as a musician, evolved into what you are today?

Fred: So, when the drummer and bass player split, we started playing with other people. And over these last two years, I’ve got to play with some phenomenal musicians and a lot of different musicians. That’s really how Late Night Special kept going. So in a way, I did branch out solo. Derek  Furr— the electric guitarist — has been with me the whole time. We played over these past four years together, and now the band actually consists of me on lead vocals and acoustic guitar, Mikey Marrero on backup vocals and electric guitar Derek Furr on electric guitar, Ryan McCoy on bass, and right now we’re playing with a guy named James Brown Jr.— who is kind of like local legend around here in Charlotte —on the drums.

Mick: I listened to the single, and it’s very catchy. I find myself singing the chorus as I drive. Your sound is catchy, and while I hate to use the word, there is a pop element to it that really makes it entertaining for everyone. What were your influences coming up?

Fred: It’s such a hard question [to answer] because what you have in our generation is like, whether your parents were listening to good music or you had older friends that would listen to good music, you know, for instance, my parents had, what I would say, was great taste in music. You know classic rock, all the oldies, anything from the Beatles to the Temptations; they were just all over the place with great music growing up. Growing up in the 90s like the music seemed incredibly new. It was like maybe you could say it was like one of the last big strong pushes for just like your original style music.

When we wrote Disco, that was one of the weirdest times of writing a song, but it was also one of the fastest. We were in Nashville on that first trip when we went out there to record, and after driving seven hours to get to Nashville, we go in the studio for six hours and play. When we get back to the cabin the producer that invited us out was like hey, we’re gonna write a new song. So we come up with this riff. Earlier he had mentioned when [he thought] of Late Night Special,  he thought of disco. We all laughed, but he said, not like the style disco or like the genre; it’s just what comes to mind, just the word itself. Let’s work around that word. So we get the vibe going in the song and the producer we’re working with is just incredibly talented. We’re in a home studio; this whole track was done in this home studio. Right after we left this masterpiece of a studio [ Eastside Manor]  we just put the vibe together and I go to get into the lyrics and like some of the first words out of my mouth are “slow down and see the salty water”,  which led into some gibberish and we tweaked out and rewrote those lyrics. That got us to the chorus where I came up with “disco disco put on a dance for the radio.” I was like, damn, it just came right out.

On top of the album release, Fred is still booking shows and keeping his foot on the pedal. Never one to be content, he takes his career seriously and puts in the journeyman work that, hopefully, will pay off in the long run and see Fred Heintz playing music with his band, Late Night Special, for years to come.

Fred: I believe in myself now and in believing in myself after that Nashville session I said, I’m going to do this for a living. I quit the food truck that I owned and decided to jump ship and do music full time started touring, doing bar shows, solo acoustic gigs all the time for my income, and I decided to take this seriously. I started studying how to really take it to the next level.

We’ve got a lot in the cards coming up for the summer and the fall. We’ve kind of been working on another full-length album for the fall. Now, sometimes that stuff gets shifted around, but that’s what I would like to do personally. Put out this seven-song kind of EP coming up in April and then I’d like to put out another 14 song, full-length album in say October.